Presented by Leo Samama.
When he settled in Vienna in 1781, Mozart got the opportunity to put his quartet technique on a higher level. He also got better acquainted with Johann Sebastian Bach’s contrapuntal works. As a response to Haydn’s opus 33, he too wrote six works, that truly were the fruit of long and exhausting efforts, as he himself wrote in the assignment to Haydn. According to Constanze, her husband composed the Quartet in D (KV421) while she was giving birth to their first child in the room next to it…. The Dissonant quartet (KV465) has become a height in his complete oeuvre.
Mozart and the Haydn quartets (Haydn-quartets)
- Mozart – Quartet in D (KV421) – 1.Allegro moderato, 2.Andante, 3.Menuetto, 4.Allegretto ma non troppo – Emerson Quartet – CD: DG
- Mozart – Quartet in C (KV465) – 1.Adagio-Allegro, 2.Andante cantabile, 3.Menuetto: Allegretto, 4.Allegro – Amadeus Quartet (historic recording early 1950’s) – CD: DG
- Mozart – Quartet in F (KV138) – only the Presto – Hagen Quartet – CD: DG
